Tell Me What You’re Reading

Writers of the Catskills: In Conversation with Mikhail Horowitz A series of self-portraits by Catskills’ literary voices  (Photo Credit: Dion Ogust) These are clips from my conversation on November 21, 2025, with Mikhail Horowitz, poet, writer, journalist, musician, satirist, performance artist and activist. Mikhail has written more than 1,000 poems (“maybe 25 are any good,” he says), along with b...

My discussion with Rebecca Rego Barry for The Overlook , the online nonprofit news outlet serving the Catskills communities of Hunter, Hurley, Olive, Saugerties, Shandaken, and Woodstock. Rebecca has had an exceptional literary journey as a book historian, a library preservationist and archivist, a magazine editor, bibliophile and publisher, as well as the author of hundreds of articles, essays, b...

While we refer to a few books in the discussion that follows, this discussion with my dear old friend Albert Lerman is primarily about his experience as an 18 year old infantryman in World War II.  And when I say old friend, I really mean it. Albert turned 100 earlier this year and Albert’s son Bill, a dear and old friend as well, suggested that it would be timely to have this discussion. Albert w...

My interview on October 24, 2025, of storyteller Martha Frankel, a memoirist, essayist, celebrity profiler, book editor and reviewer, and founder and producer of Woodstock’s Bookfests and Story Slams. A condensed and edited version of this interview was published on  November 7, 2025, in The Overlook, community journalism serving Hunter, Hurley, Olive, Saugerties, Shandaken, and Woodstock, New Yor...

Writers of the Catskills: In Conversation with Elizabeth Lesser A series of self-portraits by Catskills’ literary voices  My interview on August 15, 2025, of Elizabeth Lesser , New York Times bestselling author and the co-founder of Omega Institute , the renowned conference and retreat center located in Rhinebeck, New York.  A condensed and edited version of this interview was published on  Octobe...

Susan Brown is a professional editor, writing coach, and book doctor. She’s had forty years of teaching college creative writing and book editing, and has guided dozens of books into print as an editor, and as a writing coach. My friend Jeff Moran in Woodstock had previously mentioned Susan to me, and so I was intrigued when I heard that Susan was going to run a five week online writing workshop c...

I had a delightful discussion with Hank Neimark, one of the Directors and Eric Hefler, who plays Falstaff, in The Bird-On-A-Ciff’s Woodstock Shakespeare Festival production of “The Merry Wives of Windsor”,  Shakespeare’s light heartened, and raucous, comedy, truly a farce, which focuses on middle class domestic issues and the agency of its female characters.             The Merry Wives of Windsor...

Jenni Knight, an artist in residence at the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony (Bard MFA grad with a background in sculpture, drawing, painting and working with New York City experimental culture institutions, and currently writing about bodily integrity), discusses Autoportrait by Édouard Levé, 112 pages of mostly unconnected sentences, profound and mundane, serious and lighthearted, many irreverent, several...

Jeffrey Gurock is the author of a great new comprehensive biography of the premier voice of New York sports from the 1940s through the 1990s. The book is Marty Glickman, The Life of an American Jewish Sports Legend. I loved the book and our podcast discussion. It's a sweet, sweet, bittersweet biography.  Romania, the Bronx and Brooklyn, the example set by Hank Greenberg and by Sandy Koufax, track...

Elizabeth Lesser discussed on my Podcast the founding of Omega Institute - internationally recognized for its wellness, spirituality, creativity, and social change workshops and conferences - as well her beautiful and inspiring books about finding protection and blessings in the broken moments of our lives; enjoying the passage of time; realizing what we have in life; appreciating every moment we...

I enjoyed talking with Amy Shearn and Hannah Oberman-Breindel this summer when they were in the Artist-in-Residence writing program at Woodstock’s Byrdcliffe Arts Colony, and even more so on our recent podcast discussion of Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, which is considered to be one of the great literary masterpieces of the twentieth century.  I had not previously read any Virginia Woolf and...

Our Woodstock friend Carol Graham recently told me that her new book was just about to be published. She said something like, “Howard, this is not like one of the big, great fiction books you read, this is a ‘cozy’“. I had no idea at the time what a “cozy” was. but I do now. British crime novelist and detective fiction writer, P. D. James has been credited with saying that “All fiction is largely...

On an Upper Byrdcliffe Road walk in Woodstock this past summer, I noted to my friends, Perry Beekman and David Gordon, the recent death of Robert Gottlieb, the most acclaimed book editor of the last 50+ years. I’ve previously mentioned on the podcast, Gottlieb’s really great memoir, Avid Reader. David noted that writer Cormac McCarthy had also then recently died. David expressed enthusiasm for McC...

Carol and I walked up the road in early September to visit the Open Studios of the Artists-in-Residence Program at Woodstock’s Byrdcliffe Arts Colony. The Byrdcliffe Arts Colony was founded in 1903 by Ralph Whitehead, the son of a wealthy mill owner from Yorkshire, England. Whitehead was influenced by utopian ideas when he studied at Oxford, and he developed an enduring vision to found his own “br...

Steph Kent , co-founder, with her husband Logan Smalley, of the Call Me Ishmael project joined me to discuss Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell, the book I have recommended more than any other over the last few years.  Hamnet is a work of fiction, but it’s based in part on certain core facts on which O’Farrell builds this beautiful, devastatingly sad story, albeit with a sweet ending, of the impact of Ha...

My friend Tony Wolf and I discussed “Tales From The Wolf”, Tony’s memoir about his years living in Greenpoint, and including a compilation of his  New York Times “food cartoon” features, his superhero stories, a moving 9/11 tribute, and Trump era political cartoons. “Tales From The Wolf” can be purchased here. Tony is a cartoonist, an actor (including on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), a singer, film...

Our discussion about Erica Obey’s mystery novel, the Brooklyn North Murder, turned into a discussion of The Typology of Detective Fiction, by Bulgarian-French historian, philosopher, and literary theorist Tzvetan Todorov, a discussion about AI bots, their invasion into the publishing industry, plagiarism charges, and what it means for a book to be ghost written. We discussed Mountweazels, the dark...

Tom pulls no punches in his new book as he vividly and colorfully, and also convincingly, describes our cyber security vulnerabilities. As he explains, we are living on the razor’s edge between prosperity and devastation; the possibility of a digital Pearl Harbor, of a geopolitical D-day, of a technological and geopolitical tsunami, and of systemic vulnerabilities, including to our entire financia...

Carol and I recently attended a lovely dinner party hosted by Abigail Sturges and other supporters of the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild. On its website, the Guild describes itself as “a vibrant center for arts and crafts in the beautiful and unique rural community of Woodstock, New York, while preserving the historic and natural environment of one of the earliest utopian arts colonies in America.”  C...

My podcast guests are Alison Gaylin , a bestselling mystery writer who has been nominated for the Edgar Award four times, and has won the award in the category of Best Paperback Original for If I Die Tonight, and New York Times bestseller, and Wendy Corsi Staub, the award-winning author of more than ninety novels, best known for her psychological suspense novels. We discussed The Collective  – No...

Todd Spire is a licensed fly fishing guide and instructor, and is the owner of Esopus Creel , a company devoted to fly fishing in the Catskill Mountains, where he’s lived since 2008. Todd’s on the board of the local Trout Unlimited chapter, which helps to protect the Esopus Creek , which feeds into the Ashokan reservoir, which provides New York City with about 40% of its drinking water. Todd is a...

Jen Maxfield is an Emmy® Award winning correspondent for NBC 4 New York. She covers breaking news and general assignment stories in New Jersey, and is a fill-in anchor on all of NBC 4 New York’s newscasts. Jen has covered many of the Tri-State area’s most memorable and powerful stories throughout her long career. More After the Break describes her initial reporting and follow up many years later f...

Our friend Maxine Davidowitz recently introduced me to Hank Neimark, telling me that Hank was getting ready to work on the Summer 2022 Woodstock Shakespeare Festival production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. After talking with Hank for just a short time, I asked if he would like to talk about the play on the podcast, and he agreed.  At Hank’s suggestion, we were joined on the podcast by David Aston...

My guest for this episode is Mark Weeks, a friend and former colleague at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. Mark has practiced law at Orrick in New York and Tokyo for more than 30 years and after many years as a Partner and head of Orrick’s Tokyo office, Mark is now a Senior Counsel at the firm. Mark is also a world class, award winning, international saltwater fly fisherman. It is said that fir...

My guest for this episode is Trinh Q. Truong. Trinh came to the U.S. from Vietnam with her mother about 20 years ago. During what we in the U.S. refer to as the Vietnam War, Trinh’s grandfather worked for the governments of the Republic of Vietnam and the United States doing intelligence work, mainly mapping the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Most of the rest of her family was engaged during the war years in...